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In the U.S, we just finished the National Football championship game with the Philadelphia Eagles beating the New England Patriots in a close game. Being at least a fair weather Patriots fan, it was disappointing but thought that Philadelphia played better and deserved to win.

What I was struck by was the changes in the Ad’s that run before during and after the Superbowl. If you think back a decade or more the majority of the ad’s would be for either products (Car’s, etc.) or services (go-daddy web services, etc.).

Many if not most of the ad’s in this years Superbowl revolved around either Movies (Marvel) or TV shows, West world (reboot). I find it interesting and if you believe that ad’s reflect our culture the shift from buying things to consuming content in the way or movies and tv shows.

As I was looking for parts for my son’s 1966 International Scout, which by the way is a frequent task, I noticed that the role that was once taken up by Craiglist, that of matching buyers and sellers in a localized area is being challenged by Facebook Marketplace. Now if you are not familiar with marketplace it is very similar in purpose to craigslist for most hard goods as it matches buyers and sellers in a user defined geographic area. You can post photo’s or ask questions in much the same way as craigslist. I have used both and have to give the nod to Facebook in terms of usability over Craigslist but that is personal.

It is estimated toward the end of last year that craigslist has 50 billion page views per month. About 2.3 million people “like” Facebook marketplace. While these two comparisons are a little bit apples to oranges, they are both big.

As I have taken more notice, Facebook seems to be getting more and more listings. Does the platform where you can check in our your friends, post about yourself and what you are doing, and maybe even get news from win out over the old standby? Time will tell.

Just attended a Amazon AWS conference in NYC last week. We try to attend these types of conferences when we can from the major vendors as it keeps up to date as to what is going on. Meet with clients and prospects, etc. and overall sharpen the ax if you will. We have good relationships Microsoft and they have similar messaging and functionality.

Five things were interesting and stood out a few days after the event:

Amazon ambition to be ubiquitous in the application space and their push to drive applications both large and small through AWS.

They had a number of new announcements including a build in API library to make it easier to build and scale applications and a testing feature that allows you to test application code from a variety of different hardware and operating systems at the same time before going live.

If you follow the news, there is a quite a bit of press about Drones for commercial and recreational use. But today, if you ask someone what they know about Drones you might get a blank stare. If you have not been following this segment, here are eight reasons to care about drones.

You would be in good company as many people and a lot of important companies do. Companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook are making billion dollar investments in companies that make Drones. Why, because they are able to do things like expand the coverage of wireless to less developed countries (cheaper than towers or wires) and fly line of sight to deliver things much faster and more directly than by traditional means.

Drones do more good than you might think. Drones are a tool that can do more than shoot hellfire missiles. Drone can be used to access natural disasters such as floods, or landslides. Drones can help look for people that are lost in remote areas and can be used to further research.

The technology is at a point when it is becoming much easier to use. Twenty years ago, a Remote Control (RC) plane or helicopter took some doing to learn to fly. They were often heavy and if they hit something they hurt it, or them, or both. Today’s lightweight vehicles are much less likely to do either. As with other technologies, flying has become far easier over time, think about using your smart phone or your tablet. In the case of Drones, military has spearheaded development that is being used in commercial applications. Think NASA and Tang. My son, daughter, wife and I were able to fly our drone in a few minutes using a smart phone and software that we downloaded. And it still works!

Drones can do cool things. Take video and pictures that you were never able to do before.

Drones will add jobs to the economy. While estimates vary, Drones and their eco-system will add over 100,000 jobs to the economy over the next 10 years.

The price point of Drones is dropping like a rock just as the capacities expand. You can now buy most drones from between $40 and $1,300 dollars with all price point in between.

Drones are a natural extension of the technologies that Social Media uses. If the smart phone has extended social media, then Drones are a natural extension of that. Think about how important photo’s and video to social media. Might you envision a day, when a GPS signal to a drone, might give customized marketing messages in the same way that Amazon, Ebay, and most retailers now can with their websites?

Drones fulfill in some of us a natural longstanding desire to fly. Drones when mixed with other technologies such as the Oculus Rift will over time give the sensation of flying without strapping on wings, or running the risk of being eaten by a hawk, running the risk of turning out like Icarus’s son, or even having to battle an arch-villain.

Trying to decide where to put your hard fought marketing dollars? We tell our clients that social media should be a part and not all of your marketing budget. But for that portion of dollars that are budgeted for social media, how do you decide where to put your marketing dollars?

Here are a two things to think about that will help you to decide.

What are the types of people who you want to target and what do they use? Are you are recruiter that looking for programming talent that reside in San Francisco? Then Twitter might be a good choice. Are you selling elementary school educational software to stay at home moms? Then Facebook is the logical choice. What about Fashion to hipsters? Pinterest might be the way to go. You get the idea.

What are you trying to do? If you are trying to do damage control you want to focus on the largest amount of your customers in the shortest time. Get some bad press, maybe an email to your client list is best. Worried about the impact on potential customers then the spend a little money target the platform where you have the most potential clients. But remember to plan now, when you don’t have to. If you are trying to inform, than maybe a blog, or even an email newsletter may be the way to go. Want to be known as a thought leader in your field, Linkedin may be a good choice. Have a restaurant, then a location-based service like Foursquare might be the ticket, or maybe twitter to tell about your daily specials. There are as many options as there are types of businesses.

Follow your instincts on this. If you spend a few minutes profiling whom you are trying to target and what they are using you have a much better chance of hitting the mark.

Just follow your plan and your customers. Good luck.

Harry McNabb

Spalding Barker Strategies

Helping Businesses get the most out of their Marketing and Sales Efforts